California’s international competition

Maybe the publication that is most influential among the global elite is Foreign Affairs, which is published by the Council on Foreign Relations. The new Jan/Feb 2014 number includes a symposium on, “Where to Bet Now: Six Markets to Watch.” This is important for California because: 1) California is not on the list; nor is the United States as a whole; 2) most of the areas are on the Pacific Rim, and so are major Golden State trading partners.

The six areas are: South Korea, Turkey, Poland, the Mekong Delta Region (Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Southern China), Indonesia/the Philippines and Mexico.

In their introduction, “The Shape of Things to Come,” Editor Gideon Rose and Managing Editor Jonathan Tepperman, provide a clear warning to American, especially Californian, policymakers who might be tempted to make doing business here even more difficult:

“Elite investors now routinely send their capital abroad in a ceaseless quest for new opportunities and high returns; whether they realize it or not, hundreds of millions of less highflying people do the same indirectly, through their mutual or pension funds. So global economic forecasting — trying to look past current events to glimpse what’s coming over the horizon — has become an exercise of general, not specialized, concern.”

Of our good neighbors to the South, they explain:

“After years of stagnation, violence, and political drift, Mexico is now enjoying energetic new management, and recent reforms, plus the country’s vast oil wealth and proximity to the world’s largest market, should spur it forward in the years to come. (In an exclusive accompanying interview, Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto explains how he did it and what he plans next.)”

And across the Pacific pond:

“[The] Philippines, now an outsourcing powerhouse, has been racing ahead under the clean and committed stewardship of President Benigno Aquino III.”